Beautiful Oil Painting Effect in Photoshop With Oil Paint Filter

UPDATE: Since version CS6, the Pixel Bender plugin no longer works in Photoshop. Nevertheless this Oil Paint filter is now included in the plugins directory in the standard installation, so if you use Photoshop CS6, just skip all the installation instructions and just go to FILTERS > OIL PAINTING… and start following the tutorial.

Pixel Bender is an awesome tool from Adobe Labs that lets you create your own Photoshop filters. Basically it is both a programming language and a plugin. You can create your own filters and run them from inside Photoshop via the Pixel Bender plugin.

The default Pixel Bender installation comes with a gallery of filters. A new addition to these filters is the Oil Paint effect. This filters lets you apply an artistic oil painting effect to your images. It is really fast and extremely easy to use. Let’s take a look at the options.